All that we see or seem
by Alkyonides Meres
Summary: .. Is but a dream within a dream.. Hinata reminisces her mother.   She always stood out, like a rose inside the snow


_**A/N **__**I don't own Naruto. Also I have taken great liberties, considering we don't know Hinata's mother, so this story here is solely of her mother inside my mind and my firm belief that she must have had something to do with her daughter's insecurities, seeing as how Hanabi does not seemingly possess any. Enjoy.**_

_Τ__he sky opens up it's lights. __Ν__othing will ever be as it once was any more.__ Μ__orning arrives again.__ Ι__ wake up bathed in sunlight, it forces my eyes open.I am dead for a moment. I am lost for a moment. It's morning again. And you.. You're gone, along with my sleep. Along with my dream's beautiful birds.. .Morning don't come any more.. Sky please don't wake up.._

_The room is empty, my soul is empty and within my dreams I can still hear her sobs. _

_It was merely a dream._

_You will arrive again, accompanied by night fall and my dreams will once more save me from reality. I'll be next to you again. Only inside my mind am I able to see you any more, beloved, only there you come near me and touch my soul with your wings. _

_But once morning comes you vanish, you disappear. I open my eyes and you die at once. Please sky don't wake up. _

_The room is empty, my soul is empty and within my dreams I can still hear your sobs._

_It was merely a dream._

_Sky don't wake up any more._

Hinata can remember her mother, if only slightly. She remembers the soft curve of her slender neck where she would contently lay her little head and inhale the beloved mother's scent - while soft whispers, full of hidden words about freedom and change and fate filled her ears. Being inside those pale arms was always interesting, if only for the stories she'd share with her. In her dreams she would sometime find their ending. Hinata can not exactly pinpoint when those tales that were _barely _uttered became her anchor to _change_.

Years later Hinata will forget some of those stories but she will clearly remember her mother's scent during those few precious hours she held her near. During a snowy night, she will gaze at something peculiar and It will not be easy for her to admit it, _much less voice it,_ but the heiress will feel as if that impossible scent from that _impossible sight _she views had always been her mother's. _But really, silly girl, how can any one smell of roses in the snow? it's just... unheard of_. { you'll think this while you gaze at the red blossoms against the snowy surface. something that just could not be-yet you saw it was}.

Many nights after that, Hinata thinks she can hear her mother's soft husky voice echoing around the walls. There was something lingering there, watching, waiting. Like a greater predator, baiting it's time before it gives chase _{before it kills it's prey}_. Like her mother during a stolen night with her firstborn, because she had been_ forbidden _from being near the heir of the Hyuuga House (even if said heir had been _her child first)_. Hinata knows but does not tell - she is already a failure. Crazy won't do her any good at this point. Shivering _{yet you feel abnormally safe, you crazy child} _she closes her eyes and lets her mother's ghost watch over her. _That night an elder died at the compound from a freak accident. Months later it was revelead he was plotting the heiress assassination. _

One thing she has never forgotten, however, _{and she never will for many years to come}_ were her mother's special dark brown eyes. They used to haunt her for years in her sleep, inside her dreams, soothing her sorrows away. As a little girl, surrounded by the chilly white that were the Hyuuga's byakugan - and frozen in horror at their activated madness- her mother's dark beautiful orbs were oddly comforting. Like a fire in the winter { like roses in the snow}. Such a special colour, so different from the ones every one else around her had. Darker, burning - alive. Passionate. _(Everything a Hyuuga would never be.)_

_They _used to blame those impure eyes for her weaknesses, for her shortcomings as a ninja. _{you still dream of those nights they were yelling at her for contaminating their pure line. you still remember crying softly for fear they'll take that person away from you. and you still recall her quiet, arrogant laugh and how you were comforted by the fact that noone could truly touch her}. _Beneath their soft, elegant words were veiled insults_ {poisonous hints} _towards _that one person _who had held their heiress near her heart. Then she had withered away, too weak and sorrowful for birthing another heir_ {because how much can a rose stand in the snow, after all} _and the lonely child used to cry every night, along with her newborn sister. And those tears had nothing to do with the fact that the only person that trully mattered to her was gone, no. Mostly, they were shed because whenever she would dream those _{bad, plain, wonderful}_ eyes her elders abhorred so much she could never bring herself to hate them _{to not love them}_.

_No matter what anyone held them responsible for._

Some times Hinata wishes she could have inherited _them_ instead - just to spite those poor old_ (blind) _bastards. She -_always_- dislikes her own silver- _Hyuuga_- ones. They _never _see right.

They never _saw _her mother's smile.

Hinata can't recall, but has a feeling that her mother never smiled easily-or enough. She is reminded of a solemn person, quiet and almost cold {never Hyuuga cold though}. Yet sometimes- sometimes- {and this she _does_ remember} Hinata would do something special _{really disgraceful_}, like paint with her pencils the pristine white walls of the Hyuuga a crimson _{bloody} _hue - and her mother would look at her. Really look at her, deep and intense and powerful {admiring}. She would gaze at her first born with something akin to sadness- something akin to freedom- and then she would _smile_. That smile, that unique one. It was always mysterious, always dangerous to see. _{Always free.} _It held all emotions possible inside, Hinata used to think. A smile meant for_ her alone_.

A smile that would fade away whenever her Hyuuga matrons would dress Hinata to attend the formal gatherings of the Household. They would choose linens made of the purest white lace with complementing black satin garments. Those clothes, so similar to everyone else, they made Hinata sick. Black and white - the absence of colors and all the colors together, intricate into one familiar {disgusting} pattern. Elegant, unyielding, strong. Hyuuga. The raven haired girl years later still wishes for one of her mother's beautiful silk dresses. Those that always painted _her _in wonderful creams and soft brown colours, a difference amongst all these unbearing _white_.{ _Impure, dirtied, screaming colors of difference, you are different aren't you?}._ Her mother would always make sure to attend all of those formal events {_one day she had quietly told you that she hates them}_ tailored in _golden _and _crimson _hues of defying _silk _and _velvet_, gloriously opposed to the Hyuuga's silver and black _lace _and _satin_. In her hair, that would always be let down_,{ a blue-black waterfall amongst the chocolate brown of the Hyuuga} _crimson red roses would be woven, complimenting her clothes and making her shine gloriously -free. Her lovely mother always made sure that she stood out, like a lion amongst cats,_ {like the sun amongst the stars}_.

Her beautiful mother _always _made sure they never forgot she was _not _one of them.

_You are not either my darling child. You are a place in the sun. Hi-na-ta._

The young girl would sometimes envy her beautiful mother's arrogance and glamor. Her sense of self that made her so sure of who she was, of what she could offer. So independent. So kunoichi like. She had never felt the need to hide her hourglass figure {which her child had inherited}, never felt she should apologize for every little thing that would happen and certainly _never _bowed down to anyone. Her mother was proud _not _to be a Hyuuga and made sure to be placed _apart from _them. So it was no wonder that when her friends would ask Hinata why she viewed herself as such a disgrace, her mother's image would come fiercely back at her, leering at her incompetence in the form of a beautiful _mocking _smile_ {a twisted and broken version of the real one, but you need someone to compete with and to blame, don't you?}_. A part of her despaired at the thought that she'd never live up to that woman. _{even if said woman never asked that of you.}_

Hinata was not fire and crimson and frozen passion. She was not the embodiment of fighting till your last breath. _{She needn't be}_

But what Hinata never had the chance to learn was those things her mother had seen every time she held her child near, even if her ruby red lips were tightly shut and her limbs bound away from her _{restricted from the elders so as not to contaminate their heir further with thoughts of freedom. Too late you think. I am already free. But that's not to tell now is it..?}. _Her mother would gaze deeply at her firstborn's _lavender _eyes and she would see something terrifying _{impure}_ that made her instincts stir up and take notice of her young. _{It made her fiercely proud}_

Something _not Hyuuga._

A special something that would make her smile at _her _heiress, _her _legacy. For deep inside her heart of hearts she knew that _this _child, painted in unworthiness and failure and _off white colors_ was forever hers. This almond tree that blooms in the mist of winter, this child that _is _according to mother nature _{unlike it's mother, who is one in the million, a rose amongst the snow} _but a wonder in it's bloom _{because no tree should be able to bloom that early in fall, yet she does and while it always happens it's still weird- it's still different. Still not Hyuuga}_. Set apart from the others. The little firecracker that she bled for and gave birth next _{the one that took her life away as is a True Hyuuga's rite to passage} _could be their protege, their pride and joy. And while it pains her because she is a mother of the firecracker, she knows that her true self is mirrored in her first one. The one that was all hers. All lavender and purple hues. Not crimson red, but not white either. But then again most importantly.. Not Hyuuga.

So the mother would whisper her first {_and only}_ child words of magnitude, of force and blood and revolution. Of rebirth.

Because Hinata was flowing water and pale lilac and _life_. _Hinata was the embodiment of getting back up and moving on. {That she needed to be}_

And her child would remember _{if only slightly} _and she would evolve_ {if only slowly}_ and she would bloom_ {magnificently}._

Like an almond tree blooming earlier than expected. Inside mother nature herself. _{Nothing is impossible}_

She would influence and command _change_._ {Alternation and Rebirth}_

The Hyuugas will never notice a traitor amongst their ranks. She will bloom against their walls and her smell will poison them in their beds, yet the only thing they will see with their _white eyes_ will be a little failure. The chained mother that was kept away from her first child and was finally _killed _by her second has soiled the tree's roots so deep inside everything _not_ right that when the almond tree will rise_ {and she wil} _nothing will ever be able to shake her. It was no wonder then that when that day came _{and it did}_, their walls were painted a vivid crimson _{bloody} _hue, their seals against their _slaves_ couldn't work at all and..

_Roses bloomed inside the snow, beneath frail almond trees._

Hinata, to this day, swears she saw her mother's smiling eyes all over the compound.

_Freedom._


End file.
